Even the dead deserve a song
by Looking at her hurt
Summary: It was always going to be Stefan.


**I decided to try write lives in a thousand words or less. Stelena is the first. Hopefully I didn't completely mess it up, because I used to ship them really, really hard. And apparently I still do. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you have any couple requests, please leave a review!**

* * *

'_I think you're really pretty.' _A sixteen year old, and more than smitten, Stefan Salvatore writes on the top of Elena Gilbert's worksheet.

And she decides it's the nicest thing she's ever seen in her whole entire life.

* * *

"I love you." She tells him, because she's seventeen, and when you're seventeen, and in love, you tell someone.

Stefan nods, and can't contain the goofy grin that splits his face in two.

"That's really cool." He nods, and she shyly glances towards the ground. "I- uhm, love you too. Yeah, I do." He confirms, and Elena wonders if she'll feel this way forever.

* * *

He asks her to marry him on a Tuesday morning. It's raining, and Elena's got the flu. She's tucked in bed, with three pairs of socks, and a tap for a nose, but all he can think of is how beautiful she is, and he tells her that.

"You're full of shit, Stef." He laughs,

"Marry me." He says, and Elena starts to sputter.

"What?!" She screeches, and he laughs.

"Marry me." Elena eyes him for a moment, before she, too, starts to laugh.

"Yeah, okay." They marry barely a month later, and only twenty one.

* * *

"I think I'm in love with someone else." She whispers in his ear, but he's already dead to the world.

Three weeks later, at their one year anniversary party, they announce Elena's pregnant.

* * *

At five months, and nineteen days, Elena goes into premature labour.

Her little girl never cries.

Her little girl never takes her first breath.

Her little girl never gets to hear Elena tell her that she'd give up the entire world for her.

Her little girl never even opens her eyes.

* * *

"Elena, I can't take this anymore." He screams, her face remaining blank, because it's been a _year, _and Elena has yet to leave the lake house, where they buried Scarlett. "I don't know what to do. It's like your dead, and I get it- I do, because for a while I was dead too."

"Stefan-" She whispers.

"I miss you. I miss you in our house, in our bed, and I miss you every time I look at her nursery. I miss _her, _'Lena."

"Stefan, I don't know how to come back to you." He crouches before her, taking her hands between his own. "I'm a Mother, without a baby."

"Let me help you." He pleads, but Elena shakes her head. "I love you, Elena." He says, and Elena- for the first time in five months- starts to cry. "There will never be a time in my life where I will walk away from you." Elena closes her eyes, and wishes she were alone. She wishes she could go back, and undo what she did because then, maybe, her little girl would still be alive. "Do you hear me? I am never going to leave you."

"Everyone does." She whispers, her voice barely there.

"I'm going to stay. I'm _always _going to stay."

* * *

She wakes up in the middle of the night screaming.

She cries, and shakes, and tells him that she held her in her arms, and that she heard her cry.

She didn't, and Stefan holds her while she remembers.

* * *

"I think I'm ready to go back to work." She announces one day. Stefan is in the shower, and Elena is brushing her teeth. He pokes his head around the shower curtain.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." She nods. "It's time to move on. I feel ready."

"Do you?"

"Yeah." She says again, this time smiling. "I feel _okay."_

* * *

"Stefan!" She screams, barging into his office. Her heart is racing. Her palms are sweating.

Elena feels alive.

"What?" He asks, eyes wide, panicked. "Are you hurt? What is it? Oh my God, is it marshmallow?"

Elena cocks her head to the side, and places one hand on her hip. "What is it with you and that God damned cat?"

Stefan shrugs. "He's good company." Elena rolls her eyes.

"Stefan," She says, somewhat breathless, she grins. "I'm pregnant."

* * *

This time, Elena does everything right.

This time, her baby boy's heart stays beating.

* * *

"I don't know where you find the time, Mate." Kol observes, looking around the house. It's remarkably clean compared to how it usually looks. "I mean, Caroline and I have our hands full with Maggie. _And _we have a nanny." Stefan laughs, and swirls the ice around his glass. They're leaning against the doors, watching their families enjoy a movie marathon. The room is lit solely by the Christmas tree. Elena and Caroline have made the floor into one big bed, and are camping out with the kids.

Stefan sighs heavily, staring at his five.

"I wouldn't trade them for the world."

* * *

"Ugh, this is so unfair." Cassie screams, storming upstairs. She's fifteen, their youngest, and by far their hardest.

"Ugh, tell me about it." Stefan mimics, eliciting a small laugh from Elena. "Three more years, 'Lena. Three more years and we can get our life back." Elena sighs, and Stefan embraces her from behind.

"I can't believe they're all grown up." She says, her voice hoarse. "I mean how is Gino twenty two?!"

"I can still hear the sound of his heart beat the first time I heard it." He tells her. "I want to do it all again."

"Me too." She agrees. "But can we skip the teenage years?" She asks, as music begins to blare from the room above them.

* * *

"Oh, Stef." Elena says, rubbing the hair back from his face. He's barely there now, colder somehow.

They're both covered in wrinkles, lines, and stories, but all Elena sees is that sixteen year old boy who wrote on the top of her worksheet that she looked pretty.

"I'd stay if I could, you know." He wheezes.

"You always stayed." She whispers.

"Always." He says, and is too weak to smile.

"I won't be far behind." She tells him, placing a kiss against his cold skin. He's silent then, slipping in and out of consciousness, his breathing shallow. Elena just watches, memorizing the way his chest moves up and down.

It's an hour, maybe two before he speaks again, and Elena realizes in the coming days, that there the last words he'd ever spoken to her.

"It was a good one, wasn't it?"

"The _best." _


End file.
